On his 49th birthday in October the American rapper Snoop Dogg showed his 55 million Instagram fans a video of his face pasted onto that of a vlogger named So Y Tiet, who was counting up to 49 in a sing-song voice. Snoop Dogg tagged Tiet as “Soy Dogg” and “my cousin in Vietnam.”
For foreigners Tiet is a source of absurd and meme-friendly clips. For Vietnamese, he’s that, too, as well as a reminder of things dear to them. Underdogs. Simpler times before Vietnam’s communist government embraced capitalism. And even, paradoxically, globalization.
Before he went viral this year, Tiet was herding cows in a mountainous village near Vietnam’s south-central coast. Then he started dispatching bucolic videos that felt anachronistic in the new Vietnam of technology startups and foreign diplomacy. In the clips, he cooked corn and instant noodles by a river. He led cattle to graze, their cowbells clanging over the wheat fields. And he sang nonsensical ditties, usually counting out numbers in English.
Then came Snoop Dogg.
The rapper shared one of those counting videos on Instagram in July, and in a powerful reminder of the vast reach of social media, Tiet’s lilting voice soon caught on. His clips were perfect meme fodder. They were goofy and short, as little as 10 seconds. They were musical, in part because Vietnamese is a musical language. And they were filled with numbers, easy to shoehorn into any situation. Manchester City posted one of the clips as if Tiet were counting football scores.
Snoop Dogg has posted about him more than a dozen times, with captions like, “the only person I trust to count our mail in ballots,” and, “What year did Snoop Dogg run the west coast.” (Cue the harmonies from Tiet, counting out the years: “91, 92, 93, 94 …”)
Some Vietnamese found the snippets funny. Some were baffled by their popularity as Tiet struggled to pronounce words in broken English.
His austere lifestyle appeals to a population that has an affinity for underdogs. Vietnam delights in shocking those who underestimate it, from skirmishes with the imperial Chinese a millennium ago to the defeat of French colonizers in the 1950s and the suppression of the coronavirus. By his own account, Tiet has struggled with family deaths and health complications, and his compatriots want him to prevail. The 32-year-old, who is scrawny with a slight asymmetry in the eyes, is also ribald and self-aware.
“Hi, friends, how are you!” he yips in one YouTube video, crouched in a lean-to of logs and sheet metal. “Same old, same old? Still as handsome as I am? I’m still good, still missing some teeth!”
Rarely does Tiet go more than a minute without a giggle, or belt out a song without his campy, trademark pose: eyes closed, finger raised to the forehead, as if he’s lost in the music. He counts the numbers out of order and his lyrics are kooky. But once they worm their way into your ear, it’s not easy to get them out.
